Regionalisation - what will the future bring?

It is the contention of this special issue that regionalisation, in the sense of focusing important aspects of governance on the scale of marine eco-regions, can make a valuable contribution to the reform of the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy (cfp). Despite recent trials and tribulations associated with the current reforms, we remain firmly convinced of the merits of reforming the cfp around a process of devolving detailed, technical decision-making to some form of collective organisation of member states working together at the level of the regional sea. We remain hopeful that something more substantive will prevail by the end of 2012, perhaps in the form of non-statutory regional governance structures capable of implementing Community policy in a regionally sensitive and practical way. Though we believe that regional management is inevitable if the cfp is eventually to deliver sustainable fisheries, we acknowledge that in reality regionalising the cfp was always likely to proceed incrementally.